Power dissipated measurement of an ultrasonic generator in a viscous medium by flowmetric method.

A new flowmetric method of the power dissipated by an ultrasound generator in an aqueous medium has been developed in previous works and described in a preceding paper [V. Mancier, D. Leclercq, Ultrasonics Sonochemistry 14 (2007) 99-106]. The works presented here are an enlargement of this method to a high viscosity liquid (glycerol) for which the classical calorimetric measurements are rather difficult. As expected, it is shown that the dissipated power increases with the medium viscosity. It was also found that this flowmetric method gives good results for various quantities of liquid and positioning of the sonotrode in the tank. Moreover, the important variation of viscosity due to the heating of the liquid during experiments does not disturb flow measurements.